Accessory
by L.M.Lewis
Summary: Mark finally gets a copy of the rulebook.


Disclaimer: These are not my characters and I make no profit from them.

Owl bravely beta'ed everything between innings. Thanks, Owl.

**Author's Note: **In "The Black Widow", the title character, Tina Gray, makes a habit out of setting up a gangland patsy to take the fall for her, right before she rats some part of the organization out to the authorities. When the current patsy-elect, her mobster boyfriend's chauffeur, is discovered spending time with Gray, he's dispatched prematurely. At corrupt police Captain Filapiano's suggestion, she starts to set up Mark in place of the dead guy. The plan is sidetracked by their kidnapping, but it would have involved a B&E and the theft of Beiber's files.

**Accessory**

by L.M. Lewis

McCormick was starting to notice something about the judge's cases. It was that they were mostly not compatible with sleep. This most recent time, though, it was his own fault. The Lone Ranger had been right when he'd said Tonto had horned his way into this operation. He'd also been right in his accusations that Mark had fallen for Tina Gray hook, line, and sinker.

He thought he was over that now. He'd taken the cure, something that had involved an early-morning drive to a secluded location along with the object of his affections and a couple of Beiber's goons. She'd turned on him like a snake—calling him a loser and trying to shove him under the bus, figuratively speaking. Mark could take a hint.

Now that he was safely home and contemplating some sleep, he figured all that was behind him. He followed Hardcastle into the main house and then strolled past him, down the hall and all the way back to the kitchen. He surveyed the remains of the previous evening's entertainment. It wasn't quite as bad as he'd thought it would be—Hardcase had stowed some of the leftovers—but there was still a pile of pots and pans to contend with, along with an unusually large number of cooking utensils.

He sighed, loosened his tie, and rolled up his sleeves. From hotshot concert promoter to ex-con kitchen boy in under sixteen hours—life was like that.

He'd run a sink-full of hot water and was putting the less greasy things in to soak when the phone rang. He wiped his hands hastily on a dishtowel and reached for it on the second ring—still too late. He heard Hardcastle's "hello" and then Stanton's greeting, which sounded pretty business-like. Then he hung up.

He'd had enough of the Black Widow and company. He thought maybe he'd stick to KP duty for a day or two, maybe some lawn work, something where he could dress like a bum and work up a sweat. Not that he was giving up on the fairer sex completely—it would take more than a near-death experience to accomplish that—but he thought maybe he'd at least back off for a couple of days to let the bruises heal.

He'd still been considering that—the wear and tear associated with having a love life—when his contemplations were interrupted.

"McCormick?"

There was the thinnest veneer of a question to what was basically a summons. He sighed again, wiped his hands, then whipped the dishtowel over one shoulder, so it would be obvious that he'd been called away from important duties. He trudged through the dining room and into the hallway, muttering as he went.

"What now? Can't a guy get a pot scrubbed around here? You shouldn't have let 'em sit overnight. _I _never do that."

This last part carried him all the way into the den but Hardcastle barely glanced up, having been staring fixedly at the phone he'd apparently just hung up.

"That was Stanton," he said abruptly.

"Yeah? What'd he have to say?" Mark plopped down in one of the chairs. "I told 'em I'd come back and sign that statement first thing tomorrow. Don't tell me they want it _now_."

Hardcastle shook his head. "It's Gray, looks like she's hinting at a deal, maybe trying to play the DA's office against the feds."

"Kinda fast work, isn't it?"

"Practice," Hardcastle shot him a look. "She's used to thinking on her feet and those stakes were even higher than whether or not she'd do time."

Mark grunted a reluctant acknowledgment to this.

"Anyway," Hardcastle frowned, "she's also lawyered up and now she's making some noise about entrapment."

"_Huh_?"

"Yeah . . . Stanton wanted to give us a heads up."

"Why us? She's rolling over on Filapiano, isn't she?"

The judge pursed his lips briefly, as though the name itself were distasteful, then shook his head.

"Nah, not him. That'd make too much sense. Anyway, I figure he's got as much on her as she has on him. She's still looking for a patsy."

Mark looked confused, but confusion slowly gave way to a darkening certainty.

"_Me_?"

"Did you offer to break into Beiber's place and liberate some files from a safe?"

Mark blanched, and there must have been a fairly telling expression to go with it. The judge shook his head again, slowly, and then propped his elbow on the edge of the desk and let his chin sink into the palm of his hand.

This was worse than a chewing out. Mark scrabbled through his fast-dimming recollection of the previous night's conversation but, unfortunately, that part was still etched in his mind.

"She mentioned that Beiber had a safe hidden away in an upstairs closet at his place."

"And you volunteered to crack it for her?"

Mark winced. "Well . . . yeah, sort of."

"Is that a two-to-five-for-burglary 'sort of'?"

The sarcasm cut, mostly because it was true. Mark grasped for the nearest ready straw. "But it's not entrapment—_I'm _the one who was offering to commit a felony."

"But you asked her to help you get into Beiber's place, right? That would make her an accessory before the fact." The judge dropped his right hand to the desk and crossed his arms, leaning forward slightly. _"_Lucky for the case, _you're_ not a cop. So, no, it's not entrapment."

Mark eased back and started to let out a sigh of relief.

Hardcastle cut that off with an imperious, "No, it's _worse_ than that. It's one of the defendants having a claw into the primary witness in the case—that's what it is. I'll betcha she knows all about you and your special arrangement—Filapiano made sure of that before he sicced her on you. _He_ may have been trying to get you both killed, but he made _her_ think he just wanted the goods on you—to get you so dirty that I'd have to back off on the whole investigation."

Mark sat there for a moment, working his way back through all the layers. What finally popped out, from beneath all his own new layers of worry, was a curious, "Would you have?"

Hardcastle looked up suddenly. "Huh?"

"Would you have done that---backed off?" He didn't repeat the reason why.

The judge blinked once, scowled, and didn't answer. Oddly, it was as good as a yes in what Mark knew to be Hardcase-speak.

He pushed a smile down and straightened himself up. "Look, how bad is this? It was all talk. Nothing ever happened."

The scowl persisted. "Yeah, that. Tell me, if you two hadn't gotten snatched on your way out the door, would you have gone through with it?"

This was, surprisingly, an easier question. The smile came out and stayed. "Come on, judge. I was seeing her off. She was the one sitting behind the steering wheel when the goons showed up."

Hardcastle nodded but still looked doubtful.

"And it was six o'clock in the morning. Nobody pulls a second-story job in a residence at six a.m.; that'd be _criminally_ stupid."

He'd been a little more convincing the second time. The judge looked mostly mollified but maybe more curious.

"So what were you going to do, after you got done seeing her off?"

Mark sighed. "Well, I think I was gonna head over to the gatehouse, roust you out of there, and maybe get a little sleep." He looked wistfully out the window in the direction of his bed.

"And after that?"

Mark dragged his eyes back. "After that I probably would have done the pots and pans. They're gonna need a helluva lot of scrubbing—everything's dried on."

"And _then_?"

"And then," Mark said wearily, "I would have come in here and told you all about what I'd talked to _her_ about—the safe and everything—and you would have said it was a stupid idea and that would have been that."

Hardcastle was trying to frown, but it was clear that this recital of what would have been exemplary behavior was prying at a different expression.

Mark held his breath for a moment and then said, "But it'll be okay? I didn't mess things up?" He left open exactly which things might have been messed up by his promises to Ms. Gray.

The judge seemed to be giving it some thought, or maybe he thought suspense would have a sobering effect on the younger man, but he finally leaned forward again and said, "Yeah, most likely. She's blowing a lot of smoke but her lawyer's gonna have to sit down and figure out which defense to go with. Getting you dirty doesn't dispose of much of the evidence against her."

"Thanks . . . I think."

"Well," Hardcastle sniffed, "I'd just like it if you _believed_ half this stuff you hand back to me."

Mark couldn't quite justify himself with a lie. As crazy as it seemed, not much more than twelve hours ago he'd been willing to tackle a mobster's safe for Tina Gray.

The judge was gathering himself up. It looked like the prelude to a dismissal. "Okay, you better catch a nap."

"The pots—"

"Gotta soak, don't they? All that stuff crusted on, like you said. Go . . ."

He made a small gesture that ended with a finger pointing at the hallway. Mark took the hint and got up, though slowly. Maybe he was more tired than he thought. He tried for one last reassuring smile and then departed.

00000

He wished he could have said he slept the sleep of the just, but it was more like the dog-tired version. Nobody woke him, though, either with shouting or basketballs against the backboard. By the time he awoke on his own, it was half-light outside.

There was that moment of confusion—dawn or dusk? The clock wasn't much help, since six could pass for either, but somehow Mark didn't feel well-rested enough to have gone clear through to the next morning.

In honor of it still being the same day he didn't bother changing clothes, merely pulling on his now-wrinkled shirt and the pants from earlier. He glanced across to the main house—lights were on in the den. He thought they'd parted on reasonably good terms and, besides, if he didn't clean those pots and pans, there'd be nothing to cook dinner in.

He headed across, and gave only a perfunctory rap on the door before letting himself in. Half the time he didn't bother with that anymore, but he felt as though he was on his best behavior.

No Hardcastle in the den, despite the light on over the desk. He didn't raise his voice to find the man—it was remotely possible that even Hardcase took an occasional nap. He padded back toward the kitchen and pulled up short as he entered the doorway.

The judge was sitting at the table, a half-empty bowl of soup had been pushed off to the side and was being ignored. He had his nose in a book, something that looked old and dull. Mark scanned the counters and sink suspiciously. All evidence of the previous night's debacle had been dealt with.

Hardcastle looked up. "You want some soup? We got a lotta leftovers. I think that recipe was supposed to serve ten."

Mark smiled. "Did you put any more bay leaf in there?"

"Don't push it, kiddo."

The smile became a grin as Mark strolled over to the cabinet and got out a bowl then served himself from the pot on the stove. A spoon and a box of crackers and he settled into the chair across from Hardcastle.

"Whatcha reading?"

"This?" Hardcastle glanced up. "It's a classic. _Criminal Investigation_," he held it up for a moment.

"I thought you _wrote_ that book, Kemosabe; why you reading it?"

"I didn't write it . . . and you're the one who's gonna read it, hotshot."

He closed the cover and slid it across the table. Mark looked down at it, now bumped up against his bowl. He moved it aside carefully to avoid spills. The thing looked almost antique. He glanced back up at Hardcastle with one eyebrow quirked in a question.

"Well," the judge shrugged, "I decided it's not exactly fair to expect you to play by the rules if you don't understand 'em, right?"

Mark thought about that one for a moment and then nodded once.

"So, here's the rules. They haven't changed all that much. Evidence is evidence, the law is the law, and this book is a helluva good foundation."

Mark looked down at it dubiously. He suddenly remembered he was hungry. He grabbed a couple of crackers and crumbled them into his bowl, then picked up a spoon. He was several spoonfuls into his meal when Hardcastle got up from the table, taking his own dishes to the sink and rinsing them. His contributions to the current clean-up effort went no further than that, all other precedent being set aside.

"Got a John Wayne double feature tonight," he said with satisfaction, as he departed for the den.

Mark nodded absent-mindedly. A moment later he pulled the book a little closer, with one finger, and opened it. It was a compact volume bound in maroon leather. It bore the signs of having been oft-consulted: a pliant spine and a cover that offered no resistance.

He flipped forward a few pages into it, half-expecting it to be written in a densely antiquated style. To his astonishment, it wasn't. At least not the introduction, which talked about the ethics and purpose of the criminal justice system, and how it could be subverted by a single misstep. He smiled. Message taken. He might even read the thing through, just to show the old donkey he wasn't a total gear-head.

He let the pages drift closed; his finger caught on the front cover as the last flyleaf fell to rest. There was a yellowed label there: _Ex Libris Milton C. Hardcastle_, and below that, in faded blue ink, "Merry Christmas, 1947—Love, Nancy".

It took a moment to recover from his astonishment, this sudden glimpse into a usually closed past. He realized it probably hadn't been intentional, but . . . there might be that, too—the latent suggestion that not _all_ women were venomous. He smiled and closed the book, handling it with slightly more care than before, now that he knew its origins.

He picked up his dishes and carried them to the sink, then washed and dried what was there. He could hear the attack on the fort just getting underway. He'd already seen this one . . . twice, he thought. He picked up the book and slipped out the back door. He thought he might get some reading done.


End file.
